Ethics Quotes

Unethical Quote of the Week

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“He once had a fleeting association with the Ku Klux Klan, what does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means. He was a country boy from the hills and hollows from West Virginia. He was trying to get elected.”

—Former President Bill Clinton speaking fondly—and dishonestly— of  the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV).

Bill Clinton has never had much understanding of  the principle of integrity. To him, wanting to get elected is justification enough for joining a violently racist organization that you don’t believe in, and giving support to a movement that you find offensive is a reasonable moral compromise to make in the pursuit of power. But how do we know that Sen. Byrd didn’t reject the Klan when the group’s cross burnings and lynchings became unfashionable in order to stay elected, while secretly sympathizing with them? Well, we don’t—and the facts support this interpretation more than Clinton’s. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

“You gotta understand, there were only 28 people who had my job in the whole world. And thousands of people wanted those jobs, and every year, there were guys trying to take my job. So I needed to do anything I could to protect my job, take care of my family. Do you have any idea how much money was at stake? Do you?”

—Former Mets and Phillies star Lenny Dykstra, explaining why he used banned and illegal anabolic steroids throughout his career Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Abby Sunderland

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

“Since when does age create gigantic waves and storms?”

—16-year-old sailor Abby Sunderland, blogging from the ship that rescued her from her failed attempt to sail around the world, and responding to critics of her parents for permitting the adventure,

This may not be an ethics quote as much as it proves an ethics point. Abby’s quote is pure teen logic, and shows that her wisdom and judgment are not sufficiently sophisticated or developed to make decisions that could cost her life. No, Abby, your age didn’t create the waves and storms. It’s just that a sixteen-year-old shouldn’t be placed in a situation—or be allowed to place herself in a situation— where those age-ignorant waves and storms might kill her. Age doesn’t create rapists, drug pushers, unwanted pregnancies, drunk drivers or other perils either, but that doesn’t mean that it is responsible for parents to allow their children to be harmed by them.

When I tell my son he can’t do something that I think is too risky, he is likely to come up with an argument just as naive and irrational as Abby’s. The fact that his mind works like that shows how immature he is, and why I need to fulfill my duty to him as a parent, by protecting him from his own bad judgment.

Abby’s quote doesn’t prove the critics of her parents wrong. It proves them right.

Unethical Quote of the Week

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

“Client will not consider/review anyone NOT currently employed regardless of the reason.”

— Job posting for a “qualified engineer”at an anonymous electronics company in Angleton, Texas, placed on The People Place, a  recruiting website for the telecommunications, aerospace/defense and engineering industries.

A Huffington Post article by Laura Bassett properly condemns this hiring requirement as offensive, irresponsible, cruel and unfair during a recession, when there is widespread unemployment. The practice would also be offensive, irresponsible, cruel and unfair during an economic boom or an eclipse of the sun. Bassett interviewed a human resources representative for Benchmark industries, which follows the same hiring policies, and its rational was this: Continue reading →

Richard Bach’s World Without Trust

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

I recently encountered a quote from Richard Bach, the pop philosopher/author who wrote Jonathan Livingston Seagull, that bothered me. The context isn’t important, but it was cited with approval as enduring wisdom by the quoter. The statement:

“Anybody who’s ever mattered, anybody who’s ever been happy, anybody who’s ever given any gift to the world has been a divinely selfish soul, living for his own best interest, no exceptions.”

I can see why this quote might be popular, unlike his career-making best seller, which I threw against the wall after eight pages. It provides the perfect rationalization for selfishness and unethical conduct for people who don’t have the patience to read Nietzsche or the stomach for Ayn Rand. As a whole, it is nothing but a repackaging of “everybody does it,” but with a devilish seductive twist: everybody who’s smart, talented and successful does it. Wow. Translation: if you are divinely selfish, it means you might be one of the people who “matter.” Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Charles Blow

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Such has been the narrative of his presidency: being treated like the janitor in chief — mopping up messes made by others and being chastised for leaving streaks.”

—New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow, discussing the public’s impatience with President Obama’s response to the Gulf oil spill.

Blow’s revolting comment, buried toward the end of an article calling for President Obama to display more emotion [Translation: “Act!”] over the Gulf catastrophe, is nothing short of despicable, but perhaps we should be grateful for it nonetheless.  Now we know the drill: no matter what the issue, no matter what the provocation, biased, race-baiting commentators like Blow will judge any criticism of President Obama to be motivated by bigotry, and refuse to accord his critics the respect they expect to be given themselves. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: The Richard Blumenthal Campaign

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“I think in the end, the people of Connecticut care a lot more about what’s happening today in their lives, whether they’re going to keep their homes, their health care and their jobs.”

…. Conn. Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal (D) campaign adviser Marla Romash in an interview with The Associated Press, adopting the crisis-tested Bill Clinton tactic of insisting that matters like the honesty of elected officials has no bearing on their fitness for their jobs, and is a distraction from the real interests of the public.

Translation: “In the end, we know the public doesn’t care if its elected representatives are liars who, for example, claim to have fought in Vietnam when they didn’t, as long as they deliver the pork. Heck, you’ve seen it: Senators can be outright crooks, and they’ll still get the votes.”

The Blumenthal Vietnam scandal, as I predicted, is serving as wonderfully useful ethics test for other politicians, the media, Democrats, and Connecticut voters generally. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that he delivers.”

—-Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell on the “Morning Joe” show on MSNBC, discussing his (and President Obama’s) support for Sen. Arlen Specter, who is locked in a dead-heat race for re-nomination with challenging Congressman Joe Sestak. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Attorney General Eric Holder

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“I’ve just expressed concerns on the basis of what I’ve heard about the law. But I’m not in a position to say at this point, not having read the law, not having had the chance to interact with people are doing the review, exactly what my position is.”

—–U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee regarding Arizona’s controversial illegal immigration enforcement statute.

The President’s top lawyer cannot just express off-the-cuff opinions based on hearsay and second-hand reports as if he was sitting at a bar, shooting the breeze and munching on beer nuts. When the head of the Justice Department, not to mention one who is an African-American and presumably speaks with some moral authority on the issue of racial discrimination and civil rights, says on national T.V. (“Meet the Press”) that the law “has the possibility of leading to racial profiling,” that opinion will be presumed by all hearing it to be based on something more than Katie Couric’s bias and The New York Times’ slants.  Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“Maybe there’s only one revolution, since the beginning, the good guys against the bad guys. Question is…who are the good guys?”

—Bill Dolworth (Burt Lancaster) in the 1966 Western “The Professionals,” script by Richard Brooks, from the novel by Frank O’Roarke. He is responding to a question from the horse wrangler played by Robert Ryan, who asks why Dolworth and other Americans had fought in the Mexican revolution.

Lancaster’s casual reflection turns out to be significant, because the whole movie hinges on the problems arising from mistaking good guys for bad guys and vice versa. In ethics and in life, it is useful to remember that the people we think are wrong, misguided, ill-motivated, irresponsible and unethical often think the same of us, and might even be right. Even more disturbing is the possibility, always present, that an individual we admire, follow and look to for guidance and inspiration may be one of “the bad guys.”